“We thank you for your kind hospitality,” Aunt Hortense answered with ease. “Do we not, Lady Violet?”
A curmudgeon though she may be, Aunt Hortense was a social warrior of decades, adroit at managing complex situations like a guerrilla soldier. She possessed not only grace and poise, but scorching condemnation and a generous helping of patience, all of which were required if one wished to spend more than five minutes in the presence of Lady Almsley.
Which, Violet was reasonably certain, no one, save Charles, ever truly wanted to do.
She blinked, summoning up a smile she did not feel. “Yes, of course. You are always so good to me, and I am grateful indeed to have found a betrothed with a mother who embraces me as another daughter.”
Lies, said Wicked Violet with glee.She is a harridan and you know it.
Lady Almsley’s jaw clenched, her expression shifting from displeasure to discomfort. “Indeed,” she murmured, before losing herself in the convenience of another sip of her tea.
Though Violet and Charles had been engaged for nearly six months already, his mother had not warmed to her as she had hoped she might. Instead, her ladyship made every effort to sabotage their budding relationship.
She had expressed her opinion on numerous occasions that Violet was too old at four-and-twenty to make Charles a good wife. Lady Almsley feared Violet was past her prime child-bearing years. She also frowned upon Violet’s grandmother, who had hailed from Spain, often remarking upon Violet’s dark hair andunseemly complexion. And in general, she also frowned upon most things Violet said and did, both those within her power to change and those not, as though her ladyship had been ordained by the Lord Himself to judge Violet and find her woefully lacking.
That had beenbeforeViolet had ever kissed the Duke of Strathmore. Before she had been within his bedchamber, alone with him, tempted to throw all caution to the wind and allow him to have his wicked way with her. How wrong of her it had been to commit such stunning sins, even if they had seemed worth every second during the commission of them.
If Lady Almsley should ever learn Violet’s trespasses, the woman’s wrath would be of biblical proportions. Indeed, if she had half an inkling of the bent of Violet’s thoughts now, Charles’s mother would expel her from Peyton House without a moment’s hesitation. The plain truth of it was, when she married Charles, Violet would also be marrying his mother, for her ladyship had insinuated herself into every part of his life, as creeping and clinging as ivy vines, and every bit as suffocating, without any of the lovely effect.
Violet could not help but feel the stinging censure of Lady Almsley’s stern regard with the precision of a knife’s blade. She averted her gaze, lowering it to the tepid tea in her cup for fear if she met her ladyship’s icy stare, her guilt would shine through.
She would throw her tea in your face if she knew you were kissing the Duke of Strathmore only yesterday, Wicked Violet reminded her.
Yes, it had been just yesterday that miraculous mouth had been upon hers, and yet, it may have been a lifetime ago for all the differences between the scene in which she found herself now and the evening before, closeted in the privacy of Strathmore’s chamber. A sharp yearning to return there struck her, and she banished it as unworthy and impossible.
Here was her future, with the man seated at her side. Strathmore was a cause at best, and a means to entertain herself at worst. He was not the man she would share her life with. He would never be her husband.
More’s the pity,whispered Wicked Violet.
Drat her feeble, wandering mind.
His mouth was lovely, and he kissed like an angel and a devil combined, but that was mere physical gratification. Charles loved her. Love trumped all else, and she needed to remind herself of what was most important. She needed to arm herself, to use her reason like a shield. She could not—nay, shewould not—kiss Strathmore again. It was wrong.
Additional silence ensued, interrupted only by the gentle clink of Sèvres porcelain in saucers and the ominous ticking of a mantle clock. Time passed in stilted silence. Aunt Hortense made a rumble that sounded as if it were either a choke or a snore. A quick glance in her direction, however, confirmed she was still awake and appeared hale and hearty as ever.
Charles cleared his throat. “Perhaps I might show you my dendrobium ochreatum, Lady Violet.”
Finally, a reprieve from his dragon mother’s censure.
“That would be lovely,” Violet said hastily, eager to be free of the smothering air of the drawing room, even if she had no earthly notion what adendrobi-nonsense-ochrea-whateverwas.
“Alone in the conservatory?” Lady Almsley demanded, her tone steeped in disapproval, possessing the stern lash of a whip. “I cannot think it wise, my lord.”
Of course she did not think it wise. Violet compressed her lips as she forced herself to hold her tongue. How she would ever survive with this managing, controlling woman interfering in her life with Charles she could not say, other than that the future seemed bleaker with each passing moment.
It loomed with all the joy of a prison sentence.
There was Charles, she reminded herself. And he was a good man. Handsome, intelligent, calm and poised, well-titled, family fortune still relatively intact, though the previous earl had been a wastrel and a spendthrift before his untimely death when Charles had been but a lad. Charles was pragmatic. Cautious. He showed no indication of excess or cruelty. His teeth were good.
Dear heavens, is this what you have been reduced to?asked Wicked Violet.
Yes, it was.
“The conservatory is within our sight, is it not, Lady Almsley?” asked Aunt Hortense smoothly just then, bless her heart. “I cannot find fault in a couple about to be married walking about amongst plants. Can you?”
Of course she could. Charles’s mother found fault in everything related to Violet, even an ill-timed blink of her eyes. It had happened once. Violet had managed to get a stray lash in her eye, and Lady Almsley had found affront in her excessive blinking. As Charles had explained to her afterward, his mother had believed Violet was insinuating they did not employ enough domestics to keep up with the dusting.
“We will be gone but a few minutes, mother,” Charles told his mother now, in a calm tone calculated to sway her.
